Snow Body Knows

Last Thursday, most of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area was LAID WASTE by 10 inches of snow. And what little remains will surely be eradicated by the second round, where anywhere from another 6 to possibly 4,700 inches is due to slam into us in one of the whitest nights since a KKK rally was diverted into a Liquid Paper factory. No one will survive. NO ONE.

This, of course, completely disproves the idea of climate change. An environment in which snow canstill exist is not an environment in flux. I mean, it’s not like we’ve had two of the mildest winters on record paired up with two of the hottest summers…oh we have? Still don’t care! Those fucking polar bears can figure it out!

If only he had more guns, he’d be able to solve this problem.

Regardless, I am no fan of snow. It is something to be appreciated from afar. My brother’s enthusiasm for snow seems to be without upward limit, something I attribute largely to the fact that he lives in Venice, California…where “Snow” exists only as an urban legend told to frighten children into doing their chores. Despite growing up in Missouri and thus suffering through several actual winters, he has gained an appreciation of snow from his perpetually mild distance. (Either that, or he’s gone insane, and there’s quite a bit of evidence to support that theory, too…) “Separation makes the heart grow fonder,” sayeth the lunatic fringe, and I guess it’s about the only thing that could explain nostalgia for nature’s least-palatable Icee. Admittedly, snow IS pretty. In pictures. When it’s 80 degrees. When it’s way the hell over there.

But me and the shivering masses of the Midwest don’t have the option of jumping on a plane. We really don’t. The airports close. Instead, we get to squint against the blinding whiteness of it all. We get to shovel frozen water. We get to trudge through huge drifts, forgetting that there’s a retaining wall buried in there that might just have an adverse effect on our shins.

There are occasions when “fuck” isn’t a strong enough word.

And if the actual substance weren’t bad enough, it tends to make people go all stupid. Faced with the prospect of being cut off from the rest of society for a day, a surprising number of humans will scramble over each other for the opportunity to spend $100 on food on Monday and then tell their cashier: “I just hope this gets me through ’till Wednesday.” And Americans wonder why we’re all overweight.

Meteorologists lose their gorram minds too, as part of that whole “absolute power corrupts absolutely” equation. There aren’t too many occasions when we give a flying crap what a weatherman has to say, let alone sit still for hours of their nonsense, but a snowstorm allows them to turn the tables on us. Then we get to live through all the incredibly mundane minutiae that became the foundation of a very serious mental illness career in forecasting the weather. Suddenly, we have to care about cold fronts and computer models and that tiny ripple 1,600 miles away that will mean BIG CHANGES IN THE 10-DAY OUTLOOK! And it doesn’t matter that the forecast changes every single time you hear it. It doesn’t matter that the snowfall could vary from a light dusting to 10 feet depending on what side of the street you live on. It doesn’t even matter that everything they say seems to hint that they have no better idea of what’s going to happen than a blind cocker spaniel with a barometer shoved up its ass. We will watch their green-screened, doppler-radared antics because if there’s anything we hate more than people who claim to predict the future…it’s being moderately inconvenienced by weather.

So to hell with snow and all its frigid baggage. If I survive Snowmageddon II… if I manage to tunnel my way out and scavenge the $100 worth of ribeye some asshole bought 24 hours ago… if I manage to hold on until spring’s gentle caress once again warms the land…I swear I will never look back on these days with fondness. I will never pine for pines draped in white. I will never long for a winter wonderland. And I will never, ever, find anything appealing about snow.